ABSTRACT
Although much ignored in the historical literature, oral tradition-including mythology, folklore, and ritual performance-provides the necessary key to understanding Native American revitalization movements. In the first place, creation mythology encodes basic understandings of world order, including the people’s relationships with transcendent beings, and with the plant and animal persons of nature, their relationships with each other, and their own responsibility for social and cosmic order. At a second level, folklore remembers the way in which the events of creation structure historical struggle. Folklore reminds people not only of folly, viciousness, and pain, but also of the transformative opportunities of human life.
